Bronze Age Bonanza

Wooden coffins, heavily inlaid with copper anthropomorphic motifs, and a Bronze Age chariot unearthed from a Baghpat site dating back to 2200 to 1800 BC have the team of investigators ecstatic

- Rekha Dixit

Around four thousand years ago, a man of some military eminence died. He was buried in style, in an elaborate wood coffin inlaid with copper. Beside him, the mourners buried his chariot as well as a torch, his swords and a cunningly crafted shield. Accompanying him in death were his dog and a pet bird.

Sanjay Kumar Manjul is ecstatic. Director of the Institute of Archaeology, Delhi, Manjul points towards the impressions of chariot wheels on tightly packed mud, its copper engravings having developed a patina of green over time. The axle of the chariot is intact, so is the mast, which has been removed and kept aside. “This is a pathbreaking discovery in the entire subcontinent,” says Manjul, mindless of the midsummer sun sending sweat rivulets down his face. “It is the first time ever that we have unearthed a chariot of antiquity, and that, too, from the pre-Iron Age.” Manjul believes the find will force historians to rewrite the history of the subcontinent. The institute is run by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).

Manjul and team began working at the site in March, after getting information from Satender Kumar—the owner of the field and pradhan of village Sadiqpur Sanauli in Baghpat district of west Uttar Pradesh—of the possibility of ancient finds. Kumar’s plough had unearthed scraps of copper and shards of pottery. Villagers here know a relic immediately. In 2005, at a field just 120m away, the ASI unearthed a Harappan-era necropolis with 116 skeletons. Some kilometres away, the ASI was working at Barnava, believed to be the Varnavat of the Mahabharat.